Take pictures or watch the exhibition? Did the immersive exhibition immerse you?
In a "black room", the audience is "immersed" in it by using multimedia methods such as sound and light, and interactive experience.
As there are more and more immersive exhibitions, some people are puzzled: From the "No Photo Shooting" to the curation, the "Internet celebrity photo spots" have been set up. How is the role of the exhibition changing?
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Yang Huiyan, a girl born in the 90s, remembered that in the early afternoon of August 2019, in Beijing Art Street 798, where young literary and artistic youths gathered, she spent hundreds of tickets to see a light and shadow art exhibition created by a famous interactive art team. The price is an hour's journey each way. After queuing up outdoors for dozens of minutes, I only stayed in the exhibition hall for an hour.
"There is a big discrepancy between the on-site effect and the promotional photos. The photo looks like Alice in Wonderland, and the scene is like going to a vegetable market. There are too many people and no sentiment is cultivated. I just watched the excitement."
Of course, there are also good memories.
Yang Huiyan saw the interactive art exhibition "Shanghe Picture 3.0 on Qingming Festival" in the Palace Museum. The audience experienced the fireworks in the Northern Song Dynasty capital of Bianjing in the first person and became the characters in the long scroll.
Watching exhibitions has become one of the important lifestyles of young people nowadays. In recent years, immersive exhibitions have become "net celebrities"-in a "black room", using multimedia methods such as sound and light and interactive experience, let the audience "immerse" Among them.
With the increasing number of immersive exhibitions, some people have also raised confusion: Can exhibitions really make people "immersed"?
Does the audience come to take pictures or come to see the exhibition?
Chasing cultural trends, never forgetting the foundation of cultural heritage
"In terms of content, I hope to see animations, such as Doraemon, My Neighbor Totoro, and high-quality cultural relics exhibitions. At the technical level, I hope that immersive exhibitions can be exquisitely set, projected clearly, and have good reception capabilities. "Yang Huiyan said that when he went to see the immersive exhibition, he looked forward to a pleasant environment that would relax the body and mind and learn knowledge at the same time.
Yang Huiyan's ideas represent the aspirations of most ordinary audiences, the so-called "education through fun".
Type "immersive exhibition" in the search engine, and several large-scale exhibitions such as "You, My Muse" and "Meet Dunhuang Light and Shadow Art Exhibition" are currently on display.
"Meeting Dunhuang" was served by Chang Shana, the former dean of the Central Academy of Arts and Crafts. She copied murals in Dunhuang with her father Chang Shuhong since she was a child, dedicated to combining the traditional patterns of ancient murals with modern designs.
In her view, the combination of art and technology is the trend of the times, which can quickly let more people understand the rich culture. The light and shadow art exhibition is a new experiment and practice.
But Chang Shana also emphasized, "While we are chasing cultural trends, we must not forget the foundation of cultural heritage."
In this exhibition, inspired by the Dunhuang Grottoes "The Deer King's Journey", the story of Jiu Color Lu Yong saving the drowning man is re-interpreted with animation; Dunhuang statues and murals of almost actual size are displayed through light and shadow; music throughout the exhibition , Used instruments that match Dunhuang, such as pipa, 箜篌, 筚篥, and drums.
Xi Muliang, a doctoral student at the School of Archaeology, Culture and Museum of Peking University, discovered that in recent years there have been more and more immersive exhibitions created with sound and light, and they often interact with museums. Returning to the day when Xin Chai was buried more than 2,200 years ago, "This is definitely a good thing. The audience can have a more comprehensive, three-dimensional, and more intuitive experience after watching it."
In Xi Muliang's view, visiting an immersive exhibition is like watching a performance, with a specific visiting process, and watching one scene one by one; it is also like a kind of fast-moving consumer goods of popular culture, which brings more clarity and intensity to people. Stimulus.
"Going to a museum to see an exhibition requires your willingness to actively learn; to experience an immersive exhibition is relatively easy. When the audience accepts the presupposition of an immersive exhibition more comfortably, can they think independently? That is another Topic."
Some are "slideshows", some are "thrilling"
The company founded by Ma Xin started doing immersive exhibitions earlier in China. According to his observations, immersive exhibitions have shown an absolute upward trend starting from about 2016 and 2017. At that time, a Monet exhibition once aroused views. The person is like a block.
"Immersive exhibitions are technically presented in digital form. This form has been used in commercial fields before, such as auto shows and digital product releases. When technology and art are combined, a new form of exhibition is born. ." Ma Xin said.
When the immersive exhibition first appeared in China, the audience felt very fresh: in the past, watching the exhibition was about staring at a work or an object; now, the audience is in a larger scene, and everything around is "moving". When it comes up, there is music, and even smell, which brings a full range of feelings, "A good immersive exhibition can make people'thrilling'".
Where there is demand, there is supply. Since 2018, immersive exhibitions have sprung up, especially in first-tier cities where young people’s cultural life is active, such as Beijing and Shanghai.
"The quality can be said to be uneven, and some exhibitions are not immersive at all, they are just a'slide show'." Ma Xin said.
In 2018, Ma Xin made an immersive exhibition "You, My Muse-From Van Gogh to Matisse", presenting a century-old classic painting from Van Gogh to Matisse, visually reaching naked eye 3D The effect of curation is that each artist matches independent music, and each space has its own story and smell.
This series has become an IP, and 14 artists have been exhibited so far.
"As more and more immersive exhibitions have been seen, the audience naturally began to understand what is a good exhibition, and the bad ones will naturally be eliminated by the market." Ma Xin said that the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia in early 2020 will make the line The next exhibition was stagnant for a while, but for art creators, it was also an opportunity to calm down and think and settle down.
Ma Xin believes that a good immersive exhibition, in addition to the soft factor that the audience loves, also needs to meet some hard conditions: First, a closed, dark-field large exhibition hall provides physical space for the exhibition; Second, a good set of projection equipment provides technical guarantee for light and shadow effects.
"As an exhibition method closely related to technology, it must be built on these foundations."
Taking photos as one of the procedures for viewing the exhibition?
On Zhihu, a question-and-answer community where young people gather, someone asked, "From the time of'No Photo Shooting' to the time of curation, the'Internet celebrity photo spots' have been set up. What changes are happening in the role of the exhibition?"
In a sense, the immersive exhibition fully embodies this transformation.
For example, at the 798 exhibition, Yang Huiyan discovered that “most people go to take pictures, and I saw many self-portraits in all kinds of exotic clothes on the spot”.
"The Great Miss Su" answered this question. In fact, some "net celebrity" exhibitions are not considered art exhibitions. They have neither themes nor artists. The significance of the exhibition is to provide people with colorful scenery for taking pictures.
And this is not a cultural phenomenon unique to China.
In the United States, since 2015, a batch of Instagram photo mecca has appeared in some big cities. Not only are tickets expensive, but there are often queues at the door. "Such immersive exhibitions are actually entertainment venues."
Perhaps compared with taking pictures, the viewing experience that makes the audience more uncomfortable is: too many people, too noisy!
Previously, an immersive exhibition of Van Gogh's art was held at the National Museum of China, using image technology to restore more than 200 Van Gogh paintings.
However, the poor guidance on the scene, the people who took the photo did not leave, and the children chasing and playing... all made Xi Muliang feel greatly frustrated with the sense of immersion.
Ma Xin feels that taking pictures is not a bad thing.
In the past, people thought that museums and art galleries were places of "tall". The emergence of immersive exhibitions lowered the threshold for people to perceive art, and attracted some people who were originally wandering outside the museum.
“China’s exhibition market has just started in recent years. After the audience goes to the exhibition, taking pictures and posting to Moments has become a must. People have set up a personage that loves to watch exhibitions on social media, which at least shows that they think this is one thing. It’s worth showing off.” Ma Xin said, “From another perspective, watching art exhibitions can become a lifestyle sought after by young people. This is a good thing. When posting to Moments, you have to think about copywriting, then you have to go Understand the connotation of this exhibition and the story of this artist, and it will naturally begin to accept the influence of culture."
As the curator, Ma Xin said frankly that, at the beginning of the design of an immersive exhibition, it will consciously provide the audience with the convenience of taking pictures. From the angle of view, the audience sharing photos is the promotion of the exhibition, and the interaction itself is also a very important part of the immersive exhibition."
"Some immersive exhibitions are really suitable for taking pictures, but this is not the ultimate pursuit of the exhibition. We still hope that the audience can have a soulful communication with the artist after entering this'black room'." Ma Xin said.
China Youth Daily·China Youth Daily reporter Jiang Xiaobin Source: China Youth Daily